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gspr · 2011-07-21, 23:25

Hi.

I'm getting ready to build my first HTPC, and there seems to be many great threads that'll help me navigate the (for me) unknown HTPC hardware landscape. One extra preference I have that doesn't seem to come up in many of those threads is that I prefer a platform whose video drivers and, crucially, video acceleration, is free software. All I know at this point from desktop/laptop experience is that this rules out nVidia's offering, and that it possibly hints towards Intel's. Which Intel solutions will give me smooth 1080p playback with free software drivers running XBMC on GNU/Linux? How about this new AMD Fusion thing? I have the impression the latter's drivers aren't quite up to speed yet?

(For those wanting to turn this into a political discussion: My motivation here is simple... in a fast-moving hardware landscape, my experience is that hardware that has free software drivers tends to work forever [i.e. as long as the hardware is still powerful enough]. I much prefer that to binary blobs becoming unsupported at random points in the future.)

poofyhairguy · (This post was last modified: 2011-07-21, 23:55 by poofyhairguy.)

There really isn't anything.

Intel is a wash. Their GPU division is a failure and they are relying on closed source PowerVR SGX technology (aka the same stuff that is in smartphones) to play 1080p. You seem to be in the 2007 mindset that Intel are open source heros. That concept is dead (makes me sad too). Even their open source drivers now suck:

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=ne...&px=ODk2OA

Nvidia as you said, no open source there (but best Linux support). They don't need to, they are winning now.

As for AMD? Well they wanted to open source a solution and they couldn't:

Quote:Before anyone starts wondering, this won't do much good for those hoping to see AMD's UVD2 engine supported by the open-source Radeon graphics drivers. Video decoding/encoding still is not supported there since AMD cannot publicly document their video engine at this time without potentially compromising the Digital Rights Management for other platforms.

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=ne...&px=OTEzNg

So thanks to these factors open-source HD decoding is dead-in-the-water.

If you really want open source, my suggestion is to go the AMD route (as their open source 3D drivers are the best) for the interface and get a powerful enough CPU to do the decoding.

gspr · 2011-07-21, 23:58

Man, that is a depressing update! Sad to hear things have been going backwards since the last time I checked (2008, so you were almost right!). Well, thanks for updating me anyway.

**bobo1on1** · 2011-07-22, 02:12

That review is 7 months old, sandy bridge works quite reasonably on ubuntu 11.04, but I still hit the occasional bug.

gspr · 2011-07-22, 09:33

bobo1on1 Wrote:That review is 7 months old, sandy bridge works quite reasonably on ubuntu 11.04, but I still hit the occasional bug.

Does "reasonable" include video acceleration sufficient to give smooth 1080p video playback with just an Atom CPU?

gspr · 2011-07-22, 10:24

At this point, I feel that perhaps the best solution for me is to spend a little bit more and go for a Core i3-xxxxT system, keeping everything very simple. I guess in that case the CPU could handle the 1080p playback all by itself, so I should be safe, though Phoronix seems to indicate that with recent software video acceleration is also working fine.

Any thoughts? Does a classic, low-power i3 seem like a good Atom alternative for someone wanting free drivers?

claypigeon · 2011-07-22, 21:21

gspr Wrote:At this point, I feel that perhaps the best solution for me is to spend a little bit more and go for a Core i3-xxxxT system, keeping everything very simple. I guess in that case the CPU could handle the 1080p playback all by itself, so I should be safe, though Phoronix seems to indicate that with recent software video acceleration is also working fine.

Any thoughts? Does a classic, low-power i3 seem like a good Atom alternative for someone wanting free drivers?

From your original post the only requirement I saw was " Which Intel solutions will give me smooth 1080p playback with free software drivers running XBMC on GNU/Linux?" Well assuming what you mean by "free" is you dont have to pay anyone licensing fees to use, then the easy answer is atom/ion(or ion2) or (intel/amd cpu)/nivida (for now), with Live or openelec. all linux based, any/all of them should play 1080P smoothly and you dont have to pay anyone any fees.

gspr · 2011-07-23, 00:59

claypigeon Wrote:From your original post the only requirement I saw was " Which Intel solutions will give me smooth 1080p playback with free software drivers running XBMC on GNU/Linux?" Well assuming what you mean by "free" is you dont have to pay anyone licensing fees to use, then the easy answer is atom/ion(or ion2) or (intel/amd cpu)/nivida (for now), with Live or openelec. all linux based, any/all of them should play 1080P smoothly and you dont have to pay anyone any fees.

Sorry for the confusion: I guess I should have said "free as in FSF free"/"free as in freedom" to distinguish from "without cost". Putting aside my moral reasons, experience tells me that FOSS-supported hardware tends to equate to hardware working smoothly for as long as it's powerful enough. This appeals greatly to me.

**bobo1on1** · 2011-07-27, 02:09

gspr Wrote:Does "reasonable" include video acceleration sufficient to give smooth 1080p video playback with just an Atom CPU?

Sandy bridge is a cpu architecture with integrated gpu, Atom cpu's have a different architecture, using a Sandy bridge gpu with an atom cpu would be rather difficult to accomplish.

gspr · 2011-08-03, 14:40

bobo1on1 Wrote:Sandy bridge is a cpu architecture with integrated gpu, Atom cpu's have a different architecture, using a Sandy bridge gpu with an atom cpu would be rather difficult to accomplish.

Oh, right. Thanks for clearing that up for me.